The Move

Oh boy, is moving difficult. It’s one big ball of logistic mixed with sadness and excitement creating a new chapter of your life. Where you call home matters. It’s the place you feel comfortable in, hosts your happy moments and where you go for comfort during hard times.

I am not one for change but I have to say that this move is unlike any other before. Everytime we’ve moved it was to move city and we went back to our parents before moving back into another apartment. This time, it’s in the same city and it’s an overnight change as we won’t go back to our family house in-between.

It’s well waited for. We handed in our moving out notice in January but it was only about two months ago that we started looking for a new apartment, when I got my internship here.

It was quite the struggle but I am confident that this new place will be better for us. It’s bigger â€“ almost twice the size as our old one – is quieter, more residential, has the most amazing view and is closer to our internship companies.

However, it’s also unfurnished, meaning that we have, for the first time, to buy furniture. We already have a coffee table that my dad built, a TV and a tv table and desk from Ikea so that’s good, but it means that everything else had/has to be bought. I am very much enjoying picking out furniture (even though we are on a budget) because I can choose colors and style and it’s not imposed. But oh my, it’s expensive. I’m trying not to look at my bank account too much at the moment because I feel like crying every time, I have to remind myself it’s paytime in a couple weeks but ouch, it hurts.

I have to admit that I’m a bit nostalgic though. I always get that way when I leave somewhere. I get attached very easily to places because of the memories we made there, whether it’s for a holiday, a visit or leaving somewhere. It’s where we’ve spent a moment in our life.

I’ve spent the past week really looking differently at the apartment, remembering memories made there and the fact that our day to day life was there, it was home.

But I also quickly remember why we decided to move.

The small space, the tiny bathroom in the bedroom, the noisy sliding bedroom door in the living-room, the noise of the upstairs neighbor peeing, the 3 boys sharing the flat next door talking, laughing or partying as if they were in our apartment, the upstairs neighbor walking around as if in stilettos before my alarm goes off, the sound of the TV of my downstairs neighbor from 6pm until 3a.m. everyday. The front doors banging shut making me jump. The noise of cars passing the big intersection.

It still feels weird as the new apartment currently feels more like a house than a home because we haven’t settled in yet, we still are lacking a lot of furniture and I haven’t decorated it yet. But one step at a time I guess.